


What to Expect when Raising an Alien Shapeshifter

by Chibifukurou



Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Mini Imposter, People Eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28234821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibifukurou/pseuds/Chibifukurou
Summary: Purple looked down at his child. Charles looked back up at him. The half of a bug sticking out of their apparent stomach kicked its legs futilely.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	What to Expect when Raising an Alien Shapeshifter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [graveExcitement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/graveExcitement/gifts).



Purple looked down at his child. Charles looked back up at him. The half of a bug sticking out of their apparent stomach kicked its legs futilely. Purple stifled the urge to sigh. All the parenting books he’d been able to get his hands on (not that many on a colony in the backend of nowhere) had agreed that you couldn’t yell at kids this age. They didn’t understand why you were upset.

“Charles, don’t play with your food,” Purple said, tone even but disappointment clear.

Charles hung their head and sucked the rest of the bug into their mouth with a guilty slurp. Their teeth zipped together and disappeared into the small purple spacesuit they had mimicked from Purple’s.

“You aren’t supposed to eat things you find on the ground.” Purple reminded them. For what seemed like the five-hundredth time. There was a scraping noise behind him. Turning, he saw Green in the door of Electric. Relief made Purple’s knees feel weak. If Green had come in even a minute earlier, Purple would have had to kill him. (Which would have sucked because Green was always happy to help out with Charles. Even if Purple never felt safe enough to take him up on the offers to babysit.)

“They gotten to the age where they try to put everything in their mouths?” Green asked. His tone was amused, even though it was hard to read his body language through the thick bubble of the suit. Particularly once he turned and started fiddling with the wiring panel. “A couple of mine were like that. Could never keep their teeth out of anything.”

“Yeah. I think they might be teething,” Purple replied. He was so glad that human and imposter children seemed to share most of the toddler developmental stages. Otherwise, things would be even harder to cover up. 

“I’ll cover for your tasks if you need to go feed them.” Green closed the wiring panel and moved on to the power diversion panel.

Purple bit back a groan. The only reason anyone touched that panel was if there was a major failure in one of the colony’s sections. That was just what they needed. Hopefully, it was just lack of repairs and not sabotage.

As if triggered by that thought, the emergency meeting alarm started blaring. Green startled so hard he banged his head into the panel, and Charles started letting out the high pitched keen they used for loud noises. As though they were angry about not being the loudest thing on the colony. Active volcano sadly included.

The only consolation for having to put up with the brain meltingly high pitched keen was that Charles didn’t seem to need to use their mouth to make it. Which meant the rest of the crew assumed it was coming from a perfectly human child in a suit. And not, you know, a shape changing alien mimicking their parental figure, like some kid of demented alien duckling. 

Purple scooped Charles up and flung them up into the air, before catching them again. A few times flying and Charles was back in good spirits. Probably helped by the fact that the Alarm had been lowered to its alert setting. Meaning at least a few of the crew had made it to the conference room to shut it up.

It was only after Purple got Charles propped up on his hip, that he thought to look over to see if Green had left for the meeting without them. He hadn’t. Instead, he was frozen next to the power panel, the lense of his suit fixed on Purple and Charles.

Purple’s brain scrambled to recall the previous minutes. Had there been anything sus? No just a parent and child playing and Charles had kept to their space suit form. “Everything alright, Green?”

“Yes…that was just an…unexpected..noise.” Green replied after a long moment of silence.

“We better get to the meeting. Don’t want them deciding to report us dead.” (People had been incorrectly reported dead on at least five occasions in the year since Purple had started working on this colony. The paperwork to get reported as alive always seemed to take five times as long and involve docked pay.) As Purple made his way towards the door, he made sure to keep the bulk of his suit between Green and Charles just in case.

The conference room was full of wall to wall chaos, as usual. Purple tried to do a headcount, but half the crew was jumping around too much. He gave up after the third attempt resulted in a lower number than the previous two counts.

Finally, White yelled everyone else into at calming down. Or at least being quite enough that his yelling could be heard over the general din. “I found a dead body!”

Which of course sent the entire room back into chaos. Yells of “Who” and “Where” came from every corner. Overlapping until nobody could get a chance to answer.

Purple rolled his eyes and bounced Charles on his hip, trying to forestall another shriek. He wished he could just go back to his tasks. There were still five things on his list for today and even if Green helped cover for some of it, most of his lunch break was still going to be eaten up by this stupid meeting. Which could have been accomplished in under five minutes. If White would just take fucking charge.

Finally, ten minutes later the whole story came out. White had found half of Yellow in the laboratory, near one of the ventilation shafts. A prime spot for an Imposter incursion, according to corporate literature. (Which was widely known and thus regularly used by anyone with half a brain who wanted to cover up their crimes. It’s how Purple had planned covered up killing Green.)

The half a body thing did point towards an Imposter though. Since most human killers just stabbed or shot you and left the entire body behind. Purple scanned over the other Crewmembers, looking for any obvious tells. Nothing sus. He was so busy looking that he didn’t even realize they had gone for a vote until his wrist comm started buzzing for attention.

With a sigh he hit skip. Nobody had any proof, or even any realistic suspect from what he could tell. And anybody who claimed it was him, were quickly dissuaded by the fact Green had assured everyone they had been together. He wasn’t even surprised when they ended up throwing White into the lava pit.

He didn’t go with them. White was no more an Imposter than Purple. And even if White was an Imposter trying to kill something that was the same species as his own child seemed hypocritical. Besides throwing people in lava pits or out of airlocks didn’t do a damn thing to protect the crew. It just left them understaffed and stuck waiting for the next supply ship from the company. Something that could be months out.

His tasks in electrical were still waiting for him. And then he had to do temperature readings and a medical scan before he could think of taking a break to feed Charles. He didn’t dare ask Green to cover for him while this was all going on. No doubt a couple of the other Crewmates would be glued to the security monitors for the rest of the day. Their tasks redistributed to the rest of the Crew. And the last thing he needed was to be seen going to the wrong place (Well or for Charles to shapeshift in view of the cameras.)

Charles fell asleep halfway through Purple’s task list. Even with Purple teaching him, he didn’t seem to have much interest in learning to do human tasks. With the deaths and Charles getting bigger, maybe it was time for them to be moving on.

He couldn’t ask for reassignment right after a death. That would look Suspicious and get him thrown in the Lava. But no way did he want to risk Charles getting caught on a colony that had already had an imposter related death. They wouldn’t even bother with a vote before tossing the both of them to burn. Nevermind Charles was still to small to take down prey the size of an adult human.

#

He was so tired at the end of the day that he barely managed to give Charles a few of the high density protein rations to chew on before falling into bed. Charles a comforting weight at his side.

He jolted awake some unknown time later to the sound of crunching that his brain had learned to register as ‘Charles is eating something the shouldn’t’

“Charles, how many times have I said. No bugs,” He asked, failing to keep his voice level while half asleep. The chewing noises got faster.

With a groan, Purple rolled over and with some sleepy fumbling got his wrist mounted flashlight on and pointed in the direction of the crunching noises. Charles was frozen guiltily, their single eye looking everywhere but at Purple. The posture was so familiar from previous night time incidents, that it took Purple longer than it should to realize what Charles was eating wasn’t one of the usual bugs. Instead, it was a human leg, ankle and foot still encased in shredded yellow fabric and a work boot.

“What the FUCK!” Purple whispered, barely remembering to keep his voice down. Maybe he’d been wrong about Charles being too small to take down full sized humans.

Green’s calm voice came out of the dark. “They seemed hungry, if they resorted to eating bugs out of the open.”

Purple’s light swung up to point at the intruder, even as he scrambled for the knife he kept on the shelf above the bed. Out of reach of little Imposter tentacles. 

Green didn’t seem upset to suddenly find himself staring down a knife. He just took a bite out of a leg of his own. “I think we have some things to discuss. Like how you came to be raising one of my kind.”


End file.
